While I can completely understand your concern and even potentially some fear based on what you've been told, I'd think it would be worthwhile for you challenge those people on what data they've built their position. The evidence is far from conclusive and there is absolutely some that suggests we need to rethink the whole idea that we are wrecking our bodies.

Moderation maybe, but give up? Do you have reason to think based on your tolerance to running that there's a problem with it with respect to your own joints? Being trained for, and smartly building up to, volume of anything is virtually proof against being hurt by it. If you are hurt by it, one of the two previous things may be not as well prepared or progressed as you thought.

Really, progressive loading, or PROGRESSIVE (yelling for emphasis) is an amazing way to be tolerant of loading. If you are tolerating, consider adding some variability to training in off season, but not running is a great way to be hurt by it.

Matt

The #1 question I get locally is “Are you still running?” This is almost always from someone I used to train with and who can’t run any longer. They know I’m still running they are just asking because they wish they could. I’m 55 and don’t see any time soon where I won’t be running. Here is how I’ve done it.

1. Kept the weight down - This past year my weight shot up to the heaviest I’ve ever been. I struggled for about 6 months and could feel that weight in my knees. I switched my diet to low carb/high fat and the weight literally fell off my body. I’m down 12 lbs since the middle of June.
2. I don’t take breaks from running. It’s too difficult to start up again. I’ll cut back on mileage but the days are usually the same 4-5 days a week.
3. I swim year round. 3 Masters Swim workouts and once on my own.
4. Of course I ride my bike.
5. I hit the track with friends but not as often as when I was younger and I measure my efforts. While they are running 2:50-3:00 for 800 I’m running 3:10-3:15 and am ok with that. Recovery from that kind of running takes 3 days now when of course it used to take 2.
6. I really keep everything polarized. More now than ever before. I run zone 2 or MAf all the time and when I go hard I go hard. When not on the track with friends I go to the track on my own and run 200’s all out. 6-10.
7. I’m in the shoe business and have been my entire adult life. I have lot’s of shoes to run in and rarely ever run in the same pair twice in a row.
8. I do some of the little things too. I do drills and strides before every run and in the middle of one of my runs, I do strength and core work, I do 15 minutes of Yoga every night.
9. I visit my chiropractor monthly. Not because anything hurts but because it keeps me from anything hurting.

I should add that I travel a ton. During the summer not too much but the spring I put on 60,000 miles and crossed the Atlantic 3 times (I live in California). If if didn’t have running I would freak out. It’s what keeps me sane when I travel and I get to run in some amazing places like Central Park, Hyde Park and other places all over the world.

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Dave Jewell
Free Run Speed

Obviously the people telling you that it's bad on joints are passing bad info. I'm 68; running pretty much since 1974 or so. One year in Kona I volunteered for a study on runners over 50 who had been running for years. They took range of motion MRIs and months later we received results of the study which indicated the runners knees were far better than those sedentary. I think a number of later studies have shown the same. My advice, as stated above, keep running, run intelligently as far as a plan, and my advice is run trails a lot more often. The impact is far less and the peripheral muscles and connective tissue gets stronger. Sharped on the track or roads for speed. Keep at it and prove the skeptics wrong as they hobble along from inactivity.

Thanks for your guidance Dave. Do you have any advice on the LCHF approach to nutrition beyond the standard information available? Now that I’m over 40 I definitely have more difficulty managing my weight. Given the number of people I’m finding that are reporting similar results as you it’s worth a shot.

Regarding Back Health:

A study from the journal Nature showed that people who exercise (runners in particular) had healthier (more hydrated and hypertrophied) lumbar intervertebral discs then those that did not exercise. Considering discs get their nutrients through imbibition, this makes complete sense. I'll provide a link to the journal article below:

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45975

On a side note, runners tend to be of lower body weight on average which is also joint protective, as obesity is a major risk factor for the development of osteoarthritis. I'll have to dig through my journal article archives to find more studies of running being beneficial to the bodies joints.

There are some good resources on the subject. Mark Sisson and Phil Maffetone are a good starter. Mark has a really good book with Brad Kerns called Primal Endurance. On the performance side of things Dan Plews does a really good job of detailing how to use it in a performance mindset. The best overall book on performance over 50 years old is Fast After 50 by Joe Friel. He talks about the need to change his Marco nutrients to maintain his weight.

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Dave Jewell
Free Run Speed

Everything eventually wears out. That includes joints.

It all slips away
Youth and beauty are gone one day
No matter what you dream or feel or say
It ends in dust and disarray

Like wind on the plains, sand through the glass
Waves rolling in with the tide
Dreams die hard and we watch them erode
But we cannot be denied
The fire inside

I have been in family practice for 25 years. What destroys joints. Obesity, stop and start sports like basketball volleyball summer softball by unfit people. Football )American rye is bad too. Those are the folks getting joints replaced early on

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

SEEEEEEEGAHHH!!!!

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"one eye doubles my eyesight, so things don't look half bad" John Hiatt

I’m 41. I’ve averaged 3500 miles a year for the past 19 years. I’ve run upwards of 125 miles in a week. I’ve had years where I averaged 85 miles a week.

My ankles, knees, hips and back are all in great shape. Running is only hard on your joints if you don’t take care of the muscles that support the joints.

You know nothing about old joints. You’re still young. :-)

There are world class athletes your age. Get back to me in 20 years.

Ultimately, I think it's about finding what works well for you. That can take time.

The bottom line is that running (or any weight bearing, high speed sport/activity) takes a pretty heavy toll on joints, muscles, and bones. The body suffers. There are tears, bruises, fractures - all at the microscopic level, for pretty much any run. The great thing is that the body is really good at dealing with that kind of damage, repairing it, and ultimately making the tissues (joints, muscles, bones) stronger. That is literally why you get faster from hard workouts - your muscles are literally torn apart, but then rebuilt stronger (faster) than they were before. All of that is well and good. But sometimes it doesn't work as expected and you actually do more damage than the body can keep up with, or damage occurs that can't be quickly or easily fixed by the body. That's when we get injured, either acutely (sprain a muscle, get stress fracture, etc.) or chronically (shin splints, patellar tendonitis, etc.). So how to prevent that from happening? Well that's the million dollar question. We don't really know. We have some ideas and pretty good ones, but they're not guarantees. Essentially everyone is different and everyone's tolerance or susceptibility to this damage is different. The workouts, training, lifestyle that works for you and keeps you injury free, might be a one-way ticket to chronic injury town for me. There are some people out there (lucky bastards) that seem to be able tolerate almost any amount of training abuse, neglect all the beneficial salutary recommendations, and never suffer the slightest injury for it. The fact is they are likely to be blessed with good genetics and physical attributes that protect them or make them not susceptible to the things that plague most of us. At the end of the day - it is all about you and what you can or can't tolerate. That can only be discovered by experience and practice.

For my n=1 experience, I learned early on that my body can tolerate running 2-3 times per week. I typically max out at around 25 miles a week. I've never tackled anything longer than a half marathon distance running race. I've just learned that my body needs a full day of rest from a run (I can bike or swim - I just mean, I need a day of not running after every day of running). It took me a few years to figure out this formula, but since I have, I haven't had any injuries at all. I've also found benefit of swimming more. I swim 3-4 days a week and I think increasing my swim volume has improved my run (and bike) performance. Over this past winter, I ran much less than I typically do (1-2 times per week), but increased my swim volume a lot. I found in races that I was running faster than I ever had in my life. I think that's likely due to increased swimming improving my overall aerobic level and fitness (which benefits any endurance sport - quite likely my relatively low run volume never built up my aerobic level that much, but ramping up the swimming did. The additional benefit for me was that increased swimming did not have the caustic effects that running does, i.e. I was able to greatly increase my fitness, without the physical toll I would have imposed on my body if I had done so by increasing my running by an equivalent amount. My body had never felt better.

My general advice is that if you are a triathlete, run as little as you can and still maintain your performance goals, and substitute swimming and biking for that decreased running. Again though, it's about what works for you.

Don't know much about back but most of the evidence on knees and hips says "recreational" running does not negatively influence long-term joint health and may even be beneficial for it. There is, however, pretty consistent evidence that very-high volumes of running are detrimental for long-term joint health.

Now let's split hairs on what those terms "recreational" and "very-high volumes" mean.

Most of the evidence for high volumes of running being bad for your joints comes from former elites, pros, Olympians...in other words, people who raced and trained to race as a profession. Relatedly, people with physically demanding occupations involving lots of load carriage, kneeling/squatting, or just time on your feet, have a high prevalence of hip and knee osteoarthritis, but there is essentially no evidence that recreational loading has the same effect.

There aren't any scientific studies that I know of on joint health in people who recreationally run elite volumes, but my speculation is that the high prevalence of osteoarthritis in elite/competitive/professional runners is not so much about crossing some threshold for volume or intensity where the loading stops being good/neutral and starts being bad. I think it's more because for a pro their loading is stressful: it's not for fun or health, it's their job, their livelihood depends on it, and it comes with the stresses of pushing your body to its physical limits in a sport that's only financially lucrative for an elite few. My guesses would be:

- High rates of hip and knee osteoarthritis in "average" pros
- Normal rates in elite pros (or just pros with lots of sponsorship) who don't have the financial worries of average pros
- Normal rates in recreational runners who train with pro-type volume but aren't pros and don't compete much, they just really like running